Ithaca and Leipzig

David Yearsley writes from one of my favorite upstate towns — How Small Towns Produce Big Music. "World-class art is proper to big cities or resort-style festivals, not to backwaters—so runs the reasoning behind this attitude," he writes. "But the logic founders in its conflation of demographics and aesthetics." He continues:

Leipzig in the first half of the 18-century had a population of just over 30,000, which made it one of Germany’s largest and most thriving cities. This commercial and university center would be considered a “small town” by many modern Americans, especially those refugees from big cities who find themselves, as they sometimes put it, “in the middle of nowhere.” 30,000 is about the population of present day Ithaca, New York, also home to a university. Ithaca is officially a city, but it’s often referred to by residents as a “small town”.

Small by present-day urban standards, Leipzig’s musical offerings have not been surpassed by modern cities 1,000 times larger. Services in Leipzig’s principal churches featured elaborate music by J. S. Bach performed under his direction. The orchestra and chorus were made up of students from the school where he taught and from the university. Many of these musicians would go on to become the leading musicians of the next generation. Bach’s own family was rich with musicians, who in turn enriched civic cultural life. Leipzig was also full of outstanding amateurs and enthusiasts; the local scene was visited on occasion by famous musicians from not-so-distant Dresden, where the sumptuous Electoral court had one of the greatest stable of performers and composers in the world. Dresden was even “smaller” than Leipzig.

If one was in need of more profane fare than the unrelenting diet of guilt and piety in the churches, one could hear Bach along with members of his family and university students at Zimmerman’s coffee house in Leipzig. Imagine yourself sitting over some strong coffee and having a chat with Bach, and then, after he’d excused himself, watching him work his way through the crowded café to lead a Handel cantata and play one of his own harpsichord concertos. That’s “small” town living for you! Starbucks has nearly 20,000 outlets across the globe—almost as many as Leipzig had inhabitants—yet you’re not going to get Zimmerman’s level of culture in any of them, neither in Seattle nor in one of the ten Starbucks in Shanghai with its population of nearly twenty million.